$250 million for body cams?

That's a lotta  money, even for the Feds.  
Question:  Do you think things would have been different in Ferguson if the officer had been wearing a body cam?  The officer says that Brown, a big and scary looking guy, attacked him, and he shot in self defense.  He probably would have fired at Brown even if he had been wearing a body cam. 
   I suppose that body camera's would deter a few cops from doing a Rodney King act on some hapless target.  But American cops are pretty good about being professional, defense attorneys do a lot to reinforce the professional behavior.  I don't think $250 million worth of body cams will make them much more professional. 

What kinda tax breaks ?

Apparently some $45 billion worth of tax breaks will expire, and hit tax payers harder in this tax year.  Unless Congress repasses them in the current lame duck session.  Fox is covering this.
Question for you TV newsies.  What is in that $45 billion package?  More special favors for hedge funds and Wall St?  Let's have some details.  Otherwise we should be calling our Congress critters to urge them to vote no. 

Obama is keeping Ferguson in the news...

But why?  Ferguson is an unhappy story that real people would like to fade away.  Nobody likes 18 year olds getting shot by police.  Nobody likes riots and burning down businesses.  All real people would like the Ferguson story to get over with.  Obama seems to be working to keep Ferguson going in the news.  He held that special conference at the White House about it.  He invited head line grabbing race hustler Al Sharpton to the conference. 
    Who does Obama think he is appealing to?  There is a small minority of blacks, those who feel society is unfair to them, people we used to call the Black Panthers back in the day,  who want to keep the riots going until something good happens for them.  This is a small minority of all blacks.  So Ferguson appeals to a minority of a minority.  So why does Obama care?
   Or, does Obama want the newsies to stay on the Ferguson story because otherwise they would be reporting about something even worse for his administration?   And what might that be?

Either the economy is looking up...Or

Or Linked-In upgraded it's software.  For the first time in years, I got a robo email from Linked-In with some real job offerings.  First one was System Engineer at Raytheon.  I worked at Raytheon once upon a time.  I'm not really in the job market, I retired some years ago, but it's good to think the Linked-In's software thinks I am worth getting a resume from.
Let's hope it's the economy, I'd like to think the economy is improving despite Obama's best efforts to kill it and throw everyone out of work. 

The Robocaller says goodbye.

This one has called me at least three times in the last month.  The phone rings, I pick up,  and nobody is on the line.  I ought to hang up right then and there, but for some reason I give 'em the count of 5 to come on the line.  This robocaller waits for the count of five and then says "Goodbye".   It's persistant, it's called me three times in a month.
   What is the robocaller is trying to achieve?  It is a voice phone,  they cannot suck  my social security number or a credit card number out of a  plain old wired phone.  They don't sell me anything, or ask me any thing.  Why do they bother?  All I can think of is burglars checking to see if I am home before coming out to plunder the place.  But that's gotta be crazy thinking.
  Robocalling ought to be made a felony, with some cruel and unusual punishment attached.  Boiling in oil would be appropriate. 

US College education is too expensive

I'm on a roll.  What do you do to slow the rise of college tuition?  Which has been way higher than the general inflation rate for decades.
1.  Fire the useless mouths.  The only people who should be on salary are real professors, who teach three full credit (meets three times a week) courses per semester..  Administrators should be fired on general principles.  Administrators do not contribute to the student education, they just steal student's tuition money. 
2.  Fire the janitors, the dishwashers, and the groundskeepers.  Let the students mow the grass, sweep the halls, do the dishes, and shovel the snow.  Tell the students if they don't like doing the chores, find another college.
3.  Coaches should not be paid more than professors. 
4.  Insist on Saturday classes.  That way you can schedule Mon-Wed-Fri classes AND Tues-Thurs-Sat classes and fit more classes into the same classroom space.
5.  Stop constructing frills.  Fancy student unions, gyms, pools, theaters, dorms, anything not used for instruction.  Students can rough it, or private enterprise will step forward and fill the gap.
6.  Drop the worthless courses and majors.  Gender studies, racial studies, film criticism, art history, journalism, theatre, sociology, political science, anything that does not lead to gainful employment upon graduation. It's fraud to take a student's money are not equip him to earn a living.
7.  Drop graduate education.  The masters and doctorate and post doctoral programs lead only to jobs as college faculty, and there are virtually no job openings for college faculty.  Students going for graduate degrees are getting fleeced by the college. 
8.  Be fair to athletes.  Make sure that they graduate, in four years, with a useable degree.  If they cannot do the work, they cannot play. 

I hear UNH is warming up to cry for more taxpayer money this year. 

US health care is too damn expensive

The United States pays put 19% of GNP providing health care to its citizens.  That is a staggering sum of money.  All the rest of the world gets by pays 8% of GNP, less than half.  And, for paying all that money, US health is just fair, we rank about15th or so.  Which means 14 or so countries manage to give their citizens better health care for half the money.  Note that not one of our intrepid newsies has ever run a story explaining how that happens.  Here is my list of what we ought to do to get the price down.
1.  Competition.  Allow insurance companies to do business in every state of the union.  Right now to sell insurance in a state, the company has to do 100 tons of state paper work, and bribe a lot of officials.  It's so bad that a lot of companies just don't bother.  That's why we only have two health insurance companies up here.  Pass a federal law that says any licensed insurance company has the right to sell policies in all 50 states whether the state insurance commissions like the idea or not.  The Commerce Clause of the Constitution oughta cover this.  This will bring some choice, and perhaps some better pricing to the private insurance market.  Insurance companies will hate this idea, but companies don't have the vote.
2.  Curb the lawyers.  The lawyers should not be allowed to advertise for plaintiffs on TV.  We need a law to prevent mal practice suits for proscribing, manufacturing, selling, anything, of any FDA approved drug or device.  Even if the FDA later dis approves said drug or device.  Everyone knows that the FDA has been super cautious about approving anything, ever since the thalidomide disaster back in the '60s.  After they do approve something, it's reasonable for any man to assume it's safe.  We should not allow suits against those men just because they did something reasonable.  The lawyers will hate this, but there ain't that many lawyers in the electorate.
3.  More competition.  Allow import of drugs from any reasonable first world country, say Canada, Britain, Germany, France.  People should be able buy anything in Canada that the Canadian authorities allow on their market.  US companies often sell drugs for much lower prices overseas, mostly because the overseas authorities insist on more reasonable pricing.  Which is why drugs are often much cheaper from Canada.  People ought to be able to take advantage of this.  The drug companies hate this idea, but again, companies don't vote.  The FDA hates this idea, but that's just a turf battle.
4.  Drop the "electronic medical records" scam.  Insisting that every provider keep your medical records on his computer, just means your medical records are visible to every hacker, every employer, and every enemy.
And it costs money and is driving the smaller providers out of the business.  Large providers like this "feature", but again, companies don't vote.